*Blink*

We, of sound mind and… er… wait. Let me start again.

Back in Singapore. At the Swissotel Stamford again, only this time we lucked into the last day of a week of Fireworks. They are displayed directly outside our hotel window over the water. How cool is that. We are on the 20th floor this time rather than 50 something, but it was still a perfect view of the fireworks. I used the handy fireworks mode of my video camera (who knew?) to try to record some of it just for fun. I’ve included a clip with this post.

One of the coolest things, aside from watching them from a balcony with zero obstructions, was that you could see them reflected in all the glass buildings in the central business district as well. Just beautiful. The fireworks started exactly on time at 9pm and ran for 15 mins. They played a soundtrack down on the cricket lawn that could be heard all around the marina district… very clearly. Scary.

More pictures and stuff on Lynne’s blog.

Ok, for the record, Coke™ Blak™ is just yummy yummy yummy. YUMMY!

Even better than thirty percent off buns are cheery buns for one dollar!

I’m back in Singapore for another round of training and such. We decided to move across town this time to the marina area. We have been to a lot of places in the marina part of town but never stayed here. We ended up in the Swissotel The Stamford hotel, which is the tallest hotel in Asia (I’ve heard). 70 floors of hotel. I ended up on the 45th floor and the room has a quite beautiful view and a working balcony — I’ve not been in a hotel in the US where they would let anyone out on a balcony, particularly at these heights. Pretty cool, though, for getting pictures of tall places that will make my mother wince and feel vertigo.

Sunrise over the Singapore Central Business District and Singapore Swissotel The Stamford, looking UP

Thanks to Bill, Michele, and Steve, I’ve been through a good portion of the Caribbean but I’d never had the chance to visit the Bahamas until January 2006. Brenda Becker, Bill’s mom, rented a villa on Harbour Island for a few weeks and invited me to come along with Bill and Michele for one of the weeks.
Let me just say, uh, “wow.”

I’ve placed some pictures in a .Mac photo album so you can get a feel for the place.

I admit it, I am obsessed with the movie Madagascar. Actually, the last half of the movie. The first half, I’ll label it “Before King Julian” or BKJ for short is fairly boring. Mildly amusing at best.

Midway through the film we are introduced to the lemurs, most notably King Julian. This character is the most fun I’ve seen in a movie in years. King Julian quotes been completely integrated into my vocabulary — not to mention that of my friends and family. This hasn’t happened since such movies as Party Girl, Love and Human Remains, Real Genius, and Top Secret.
Go ahead… take a nibble.

I was working out last night on my bike, parked on a trainer because it is freaking winter out there. In front of me sat a television, upon which I was viewing the show Super size me. This is a show where the documentary artist went on an only-McDonalds diet for 30 days and nearly killed himself in the process.

Now here is the dumb part… when the show was over, actually during the show, I was so hungry for a McDonald’s cheeseburger. Good grief.

When traveling to Singapore, I take my normal T-Mobile GSM phone with me and it “just works.” People can call my U.S. number and it rings and acts normal in Singapore. GSM phone service is in use in most places in the world, allowing you unprecedented uniformity of communications. Everything is great except that it costs $1.65/min in Singapore with a U.S. SIM (Subscriber Identity Module). Youch.

Naturally, I didn’t use the voice part of my phone very much when I’m here to avoid the terrible cost. Instead, I turned to Skype. Skype is a free internet telephony application and network that allows computer to computer calls for free using a broadband Internet connection. Skype’s strengths are its simplicity and it has been tuned for good audio quality under poor network conditions.

Computer to computer voice communications isn’t terribly useful most of the time, though. So in addition to that, you can subscribe to SkypeIn and SkypeOut. SkypeIn is where you attach a phone number or numbers in any number of cities to your Skype account. SkypeIn and SkypeOut are where Skype makes its money by renting you the numbers and charging per-minute rates.

When people call your SkypeIn phone number(s), your computer can receive the call just like someone calling you with Skype from another computer. SkypeOut lets you call regular phone numbers from your computer. These services, along with a bluetooth headset (earphone/mic combo) let my laptop communicate with any land or cell phone in the world for generally astonishingly reasonable cost (mostly where I call is 2 to 3 cents a minute.)

Now, one of the features of GSM phone service is that your identity (phone # and other stuff) is stored on a little smart card called a SIM. These cards can be removed from your phone and put into another GSM phone and that phone will then become the phone number associated with the SIM card. In the U.S., generally this isn’t done because cellular phones are sold “locked” to a particular provider. If you buy a phone from, say, Cingular, the phone will only work with Cingular SIM cards unless the phone gets unlocked.

In most other places in the world, this doesn’t appear to be standard practice. When here in Singapore, I tend to buy cell phones so my cell phones are unlocked and can work with any SIM card. In addition, when we are here, I buy a StarHub Green prepaid SIM service which gives me a local phone number that is very economical for voice and data locally (around 14 cents US/min)

The problem with that is that while the local SIM card is in my phone, my telephone # in the US will just go right to voicemail. While the US SIM card is in my phone, I get charged terrible roaming fees. What to do?

Well this time, I thought of a clever trick. Skype is testing a new service called Skype forwarding. This service lets you forward your skype account to another Skype account, or any phone # in the world — costing only as much as it would if you were using SkypeOut.

So, here is what I did. I installed my US SIM card in my phone. I turned on the call forwarding for my US number to forward to my SkypeIn number that is in the same area code as my US mobile phone. This allows me to receive calls to my mobile phone on my computer.

Next, I installed my local SIM card in my phone, turning it into a local prepaid phone. Using the Skype software (had to use a Windows version using virtual pc because the Mac OS X version of Skype doesn’t yet support the feature) I set my Skype id to forward to my Singapore mobile number.

The result? Calls to my US cell phone are forwarded to my Skype account, which is forwarded over the Internet to my local prepaid mobile phone.

The result? I can receive calls transparently from my US mobile phone on my Singapore mobile phone for around 15 cents a minute and the callers don’t really know any difference. Outgoing calls to the US, cost around 13 cents a minute because of #5 below.

There are a couple of gotchas.

1. SMS messages are not forwarded
2. Forwarding calls from a US mobile phone to another phone number still uses mobile phone minutes as if you were making a call from the mobile phone to the forward-to number. This is not a problem for me because my plan has sufficient minutes for all my calling and during the time that I am up here in Singapore, my cell plan is under the unlimited nights and weekends usually.
3. It isn’t real speedy to setup the call. It takes 5 rings on the caller’s side before my phone rings the first time here. Longer if Skype is online on my computer so I have a chance to intercept the call there before it goes to the local mobile #
4. There is a slight conversation delay because of the voice over internet thing, just like using Skype on the computer. Although the delay is less than the computer version, very tolerable.
5. Outgoing calls from the local phone use normal minutes for local calls and StarHub rates for international long distance. The reason I chose StarHub over the other providers here is that they are running a promotion that if you dial outgoing long distance with a special prefix (018) rather than +1 the long distance is “free” costing only local minute charges.

The world of VOIP (Voice Over IP) is changing everything. Telephone providers need to know that people will use the most straightforward service if the price is reasonable. If my roaming rate was even as high as 30 cents a minute, I would probably just use the phone normally. This scheme is not straightforward, but the price is fabulous. International roaming charges at $1.70 USD per minute is just stupid.

My wonderful and fabulous friends Bill & Michele have given me a fabulous, black, iPod nano for my upcoming “threshold” birthday which shall remain nameless. I knew they were fabulous and all, and I’ve heard people say that you really don’t understand how fabulous they are until you hold one. Well, it is true. Taking it out of its diminutive packaging I almost missed it because I thought it was a picture of the nano, not the nano itself. Truly a stunning player.

Thank you guys!